Up on the bridge, almost 100 feet above the water, the obsessively careful Commodore Don McGhee stared out over the four bronze-colored holding domes, which each rose 60 feet above the scarlet-painted deck. The bow of the Global Bronco was nearly 300 yards in front of him, and the veteran Master from the southeast Texas gulf port of Houston had a view straight down the massive gantry that ran as a steel catwalk clean across the top of each dome, all the way down to the foredeck.
Right now the ship was making its way well outside the Omani inshore traffic zone, with the local Navy’s firing practice area 10 miles astern. Ahead of them was the narrowest part of the Hormuz Strait, and in this clear weather they would see plainly the Omani headlands of Jazirat Musandam, and two miles farther south, Ra’s Qabr al Hindi. They were too far away to catch a glimpse on the horizon of the glowering shores of Iran on the eastern side of the crescent-shaped 30-mile-wide seaway.
Commodore McGhee was in conference with Chief Engineer Andre Waugh. And up ahead of them they could still see a Liberian-registered British tanker, a 300,000-ton VLCC bound for the North Atlantic. They had been catching her slowly all the way down from the new gas-loading terminal off Qatar, right around the Emirates peninsula, past Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and now they were less than 50 miles from the open waters of the Arabian Sea. All tanker captains were glad to get out of the gulf, and McGhee was no exception.
There was always a menace about patrolling Iranian warships, a menace compounded in the past few months by yet another Iranian militant threat to lay a minefield directly off its coast at the choke point of the entrance.
Both tanker officers knew there had been for several weeks a worldwide unease about China’s warships currently moored in the Ayatollah’s Navy base at Bandar Abbas. And they knew also of the tensions caused by the opening of the brand-new Sino-Iranian refinery at the end of the Chinese-built pipeline, which ran 1,000 miles, out of the Kazakhstan oil fields, across Turkmenistan, and clean through the sweltering Iranian Plateaux to the coast. Everyone in the Western oil business knew this pipeline gave China something close to a “lock” on the second-largest easy-access oil deposits on earth.
One more threat by Iran’s increasingly noisy anti-West politicians to bottle up the entrance to the gulf would probably send the Pentagon into a collective dance of death. It was all politics, threat and counterthreat, but to men like Commodore McGhee, masters of the big crude-oil and gas carriers working the north end of the Arabian Sea, those politics had an edge of grim reality.
“This darned place always gives me the creeps,” he said. “I’ll just be glad to make the open ocean.”
“I know what you mean,” replied Chief Andre Waugh. “So do the British by the look of it…that’s a Royal Navy helicopter up ahead, checking that big tanker out of the area. Right now they’re checking every British ship in and out of the gulf. Guess they don’t like the political situation, right?”
No ships in the entire history of navigation have been more political than the big tankers, upon whose safe passage half the world depends in order to keep moving. The fate and prosperity of nations literally hang in the balance as these great leviathans carry the principal source of world energy from where it is to where it is needed.
Commodore McGhee, a tanker man for thirty years, had never once entered Iranian waters, always keeping well over on the Omani side. Back home in Texas, in the Houston control room, on the thirty-second floor of the Travis Street headquarters of Texas Global Ships, Inc., Robert J. Heseltine III, the president, had issued specific instructions: Stay well clear of the Ayatollahs and their Navy. Don McGhee did not need reminding.
Texas Global ran six ships, but Global Bronco was the only LNG carrier. Heseltine was right proud of his Texan roots, and he had named the other five ships Global Star, Global Rose, Global Brand, Global Steer and Global Range. They were all 300,000-ton VLCCs, which normally plied among the Gulf of Iran, southern Africa, the northeast tanker ports of the USA, and Europe.
Bronco usually worked in the east, steaming between the gas-rich gulf ports of Qatar and Abu Dhabi, and Tokyo Bay, where Japanese Electric unloads millions of cubic meters of natural gas every week. This particular voyage, however, was shorter — just as far as the southern Taiwan port of Yung-An. The massive liquid-gas cargo would be used almost exclusively for electric power generation.
Robert J. Heseltine III had not laid eyes on one of his ships for three years, and probably wouldn’t for another three years. Giant tankers cost $100,000 a day to operate and they have to keep working, roaming the world picking up cargo and unloading it. There never was a reason for any of the ships to return to home base in Texas, and both crew and supplies were ferried out to them, by commercial airlines, and then by helicopter, while the great energy ships kept right on moving, thousands of miles from home. No merchantmen since the days of sail, indeed since the clipper ships, had ever undertaken such vast and endless transworld journeys.
Commodore McGhee was now traveling a couple of knots faster than the VLCC up ahead, and he positioned himself accordingly, preparing to run past, a half mile off the tanker’s port beam, a couple of hours from now.
The sun beat down on the scarlet deck as the Global Bronco crossed the 26.20-degree line of latitude right on 56.38 north. They were eight miles off Ra’s Qabr al Hindi, and the captain could just make out the headland through his glasses. He ordered a steward to bring him up a cup of coffee, and a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and the 80,000-tonner ran on due south for another mile.
It was 12.10 P.M. precisely, in glaring sunshine on a still-calm sea, when the Global Bronco nudged into Admiral Zhang Yushu’s Russian PLT-3 contact mine. The one-ton steel container of compressed high explosives, riding high on its anchor line, detonated with savage force. The massive forward inertia of the ship carried her on for just a few yards before the echoing underwater blast blew a huge hole in her hull, starboard side of the keel, right behind the bow.
All the for’ard plates along the starboard side buckled back with a tearing of metal showering a hailstorm of sparks inside the hull. The for’ard liquid gas tank, reinforced aluminum, held, then ruptured, and nearly 20,000 tons of one of the world’s most volatile liquid gasses, its content bolstered by both methane and propane, began to flood out of its refrigerated environment. It hit an atmosphere almost 200 degrees centigrade warmer, and it flashed instantly into vaporized gas, exploding with a near-deafening WHOOOOOOOSSSSH! Consider the sound made by a cupful of gasoline on a bonfire just before you toss a lighted match into it — and then multiply that sound by around 40 million. That’s loud.
The destruction to the entire front section of the ship was staggering. The liquid gas was, after all, just a highly compressed version of regular gas, and everyone has seen photographs of houses being obliterated by occasional explosions from this stuff. The sheer volume of LNG contained in the vast holding tanks of the Global Bronco caused a monumental blast, and the blast from Tank Four somehow smashed a hole in Tank Three, and seconds later the 20,000 tons of liquid fuel in there also blew.
The great ship shuddered. Flames leaped a hundred feet into the sky. Against all odds, Tanks Two and One held. But thousands of tons of fuel from the for’ard tanks poured through the fractured hull plates on the smashed starboard side of the ship, below the waterline, and into the waters of the Hormuz Strait, rising rapidly to the surface.
Commodore McGhee and his Chief Engineer were still on the bridge, almost in shock at what they had seen erupt 250 yards in front of them. Heat from the for’ard inferno was already melting the metal. They could see the white-hot bow end of the high gantry sagging like strips of putty. But the still-powerful forward motion of the Bronco was allowing her to leave a wide, unexploded slipstream lake of liquid gas in the water, which was evaporating at a diabolical rate, rising up off the water.
Don McGhee realized the danger. The gas, decompressed, and now in contact with the atmosphere, would evaporate over a relatively short period of time. But
the danger of ignition was tantamout. Miraculously the great diesel engines were still running, and the Captain ordered, “ALL STOP!”
The bow of the ship was now dipping deep and the fires were reducing. The glowing-hot foredeck sent clouds of steam into the air as the waters of the strait washed over. But the gas continued to gush into the ocean, 20 feet below the surface. Don McGhee did not think his strongly compartmentalized ship would go down, and he did think the fires would reduce as the bow went lower. It was the unseen gas cloud he knew was rising rapidly up off the surface that worried him. Both he and Andre Waugh could smell it, light and carbonized on the air.
Members of the crew were racing toward the bridge, terrified, uncertain what to do. Astonishingly, no one had been for’ard at the time the ship hit, and no one was hurt. The problem was how to get off. There was no chance of jumping over the side into the toxic lake of liquid gas, and Commodore McGhee knew it would be lethal for a helicopter to try to reach them, since a tiny spark from the engine could ignite the gas cloud into a mountainous pillar of fire that would climb thousands of feet into the air, the heat almost certainly vaporizing the ship and the final two 20,000-ton tanks of liquid gas.
The roar of the for’ard fire way down the deck was like a 50-foot-high gas cooker, blasting out blue flame, too loud, too intimidating, to allow any question of trying to control it. Commodore McGhee ordered: “ABANDON SHIP! MAN THE LIFEBOATS PORT SIDE.”
The crew charged off the bridge. The radio operator shouted, “I’ll transmit a MAYDAY! before we go.” The rest of them made for the three big orange Zodiacs moored on their davits along the deck rails. And then Commodore McGhee saw it — the Royal Navy’s helicopter clattering toward them, low over the surface, totally unaware of the gas cloud rising up along the Bronco’s aft starboard side and stern.
The tanker’s master ordered his radio operator to open up the VHF on 16 and stop the chopper’s advance at all costs. Then he opened the door to the viewing catwalk, a white-walkway jutting over the main deck. And he raced out onto it, jumping up and down, waving his arms, yelling to the pilot at the top of his lungs in futile desperation…“STOP…FOR GOD’S SAKE STOP…PLEASE STOP…TURN AROUND…”
Inside the helicopter both the pilot and his navigator saw the Captain’s frenzied signal. The Navigator just had time to say, “Take a turn to the left here…this guy’s waving us off…. I’ll try the radio….”
But it was too late. The Royal Navy’s Sea King Mk 4, making just over 60 knots, flew bang into the middle of the rising gas-cloud, which ignited like a nuclear bomb, causing a gigantic blowtorch to rear up from off the surface of the water, roaring a black, scarlet and blue tower of fire 5,000 feet into the air.
The Navy helicopter was incinerated instantly. The Global Bronco and her crew perished in a split second, when the entire after end of the ship was enveloped by the searing near-2,000-degree-centigrade petrochemical blaze. Two minutes later there was just a blistered, white-hot steel-and-aluminum hulk, sizzling in the water, where once the mighty tanker had been. And the flames on board were dying. There was nothing left to burn, not even a coat of paint, not even an electric wire.
By some fluke of science and nature, Tank Two had held, but the aluminum of Tank One had melted and 20,000 more tons of liquid gas exploded in another deafening fireball. And the gas in the bottom third of the tank just poured out into the water, feeding the gas inferno, fueling the 200-yard-wide column of raging fire, which fought its way higher and higher as the liquid fuel flashed off into the atmosphere. Furiously hot now, sucking in oxygen and nitrogen like a tornado, it rose up thousands of feet into the clear skies. It was as if Satan himself were attempting to communicate with God.
0800. Friday, April 27.
Office of Admiral Arnold Morgan. The White House.
Washington. D.C.
Arnold Morgan was watching CNN news with rapt concentration. The destruction of a big U.S.-owned tanker, with no survivors, deep in the Gulf of Hormuz, was the lead item. Despite being six miles from Oman, and at least 40 from Bandar Abbas, the Global Bronco had very quickly become public property. Right now CNN was showing graphic pictures of the burning hulk, and its accompanying column of fire. The reporter was mentioning the overall problem, that Tank Two might suddenly blow, and for that reason no one was taking the risk of going closer.
Because the ship was well over on the Omani side of the strait, news-gathering operations were being conducted with a friendly nation, and most broadcasters and media organizations had offices and satellite facilities in nearby Dubai. Two clattering helicopters were already prowling the shore, trying to take pictures, but unable to fly in close.
The Omani Navy had two 1,450-ton guided-missile Corvettes circling the area, warning ships off, and CNN had close-up pictures of these two British-built bodyguards. There were also two Chinese-built guided-missile frigates, flying the flag of Iran, within 10 miles of the disaster.
The dimension of the story outshone the limited coverage possible at this time. And the 24-hour news station was already off-line, reporting, wrongly, the Global Bronco was still burning. It wasn’t the tanker on fire. It was the released gas in the water.
They interviewed a Royal Navy Lieutenant Commander serving with a patrol out of Dubai, who speculated it might be necessary to bang a torpedo right into the hull, starboard of Tank Two, in order to blow up the remaining liquid gas. Either that or shell the giant on-deck holding dome. “It cannot,” he said, “just be left out there, ultimately to sink and take its twenty-thousand-ton cargo with it.”
Arnold Morgan sipped his black coffee, and listened, nodding slowly, and pondering. “Now who the hell are Texas Global Ships. And what do they have to say for themselves? Come on, guys. Get some reporters on this…gimme the only information worth having…. What do the owners think of the destruction of their ship…accident? I suppose so. But if so, how? I don’t think there’s ever been a major explosion and fire on one of those gas ships…except for one in Tokyo Bay nearly twenty years ago.”
He switched off the channel, and walked over to his desk. “I wish I knew a little more about gas carriers,” he said. “They must have the best possible safety systems…hmmmmm…I suppose there’s no chance the goddamned towelheads whacked it with a torpedo, or the Iranians planted a minefield out in the exit lanes from the gulf. No. I guess not. There seems to be no suggestion of that. Still I better get Fort Meade onto it. I’d just like to know a little more about the Global Bronco.
“KATHY!” he yelled, scorning as ever the delicate little green telephone on his desk, which would have connected him to anyone in the world, including the lady right outside the door, the spectacular redhead Kathy O’Brien, who for three years had refused to marry him until he retired.
The wide wooden door opened, and she came in, shaking her head, saying she understood he would rather have a ship’s tannoy system so he could bellow at everyone at the same time, but this was the twenty-first century and normal telephones were becoming quite acceptable, and would he ever consider using one. “Darling rude pig,” she added.
“Could I have a little more coffee?” he asked, smiling. “And then I’ve got a little task for you.”
“I’m not here to do little tasks,” she replied. “Don’t you have any big ones?”
The Big Man chuckled, all five feet eight and a half inches of him. He ignored her request, and asked if she had been watching the news.
“No, but I heard on the radio about the tanker that just blew up in the gulf. Soon as they mentioned it, I guessed it would be right up there on the priority list.”
“Well, Kathy, it’s a volatile area, and we always have to guard against lunatic action by the locals…. Anyway, the ship was owned by an outfit called Texas Global Ships. I want you to locate them, and get their president on the line.”
“You have an address?”
“No. But try Information in the Houston-Galveston area. It’s bound to be down there in the gulf oil ports…
you’ll find it.”
Five minutes later, she returned to tell the Admiral that she’d found it, but had spoken only to a security guard since the place was not yet open.
“What’s the name of the president?”
“Robert J. Heseltine III.”
“Call the guard back, and tell him to have the boss call the White House, right away. Give him the main switchboard number and have him put through here immediately.”
Kathy retreated, full of optimism. She knew the galvanizing effect a call from the White House can have on any American, and she was right about the guard.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “Right away.”
Three minutes and fifteen seconds later, she answered her phone and a deep Texan voice said, “Morning. This is Bob Heseltine.”
She switched him through to the Admiral, who commiserated briefly about the ship, and then asked him, “Bob, do you have any reason to think the Global Bronco might have run into some form of Naval hardware down there…a mine or a torpedo or something?”
“Well, every tanker man worries about the strait, but it’s always been safe on the Omani side…We didn’t hardly get a warning from the ship…apparently, according to the Royal Navy, our operator just had time to call ‘MAYDAY!’ twice, before the line went dead.”
“So whatever happened happened pretty damned quickly,” replied the Admiral.
“Yessir. I do believe so.”
“Any idea what might have caused the explosion?”
“Not really, Admiral. We do have some kind of an eyewitness report from a Liberian-registered crude-oil tanker about two miles ahead of the Bronco. Just said the for’ard holding dome definitely blew first. Then they saw the one next to it go up as well.”
“I guess that would confirm the possibility of a mine…all ships hit them bow first. A torpedo would have been much more likely to come in amidships.”
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